


And the full moon that hangs over, these dreams in the mist

by TheDameintheRaininMaine



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Lucid Dreaming, Post-X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Shared Dreams, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 07:00:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7674652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDameintheRaininMaine/pseuds/TheDameintheRaininMaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean's telepathy has an unexpected nighttime side effect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the full moon that hangs over, these dreams in the mist

Telepathy wasn't quite what Jean had expected. 

Cartoons had always made it seem like watching a movie, or reading a line from a novel. But reading another person's thoughts was far more complex that than. 

While it was true she did often see images, they were often impressionistic. Glimpses, fragments, out of order, like a film reel that had been chopped. And even the most mundane of thoughts was rarely a line on a page, even the smallest of impressions often had some kind of emotion along with it, even if it was something like boredom or disinterest. 

And Jean certainly hadn't expected how hard it would be to learn to separate her own thoughts and feelings from other peoples. 

But the Professor understood, and helped her however he could. She learned how to focus in on what a single person was thinking, and also how to keep all thoughts out of her own head. 

It was a work in progress sure. Every time she accidentally blurted out something she shouldn't know, her face would burn with the whispers that followed of "freak", but she could deal. 

But the one area that was still a struggle and a mystery came at night when she was asleep. 

Jean had never put much thought into dreaming. She rarely remembered her own. But in the weeks and months before she came to the institute, she was overcome at night often by the anxiety filled dreams that her mother had. 

It wasn't so bad at the Institute. There seemed to be some kind of proximity required for her to unintentionally get a bit of someone's dream. 

She occasionally got flashes from her roommate Jubilee at night, but thankfully, most of her dreams weren't troubling despite what Jean knew of her life before the school. Jean recognizes some things from them; places from where she grew up in Southern California, her foster parents that she still had pictures of. And for the most part, the two were able to cohabitate without it becoming a problem.

As she gains more control over her powers, occasionally dreams from other students find their way too her. Being that the mansion contains a great number of teenage boys, some of them are just unpleasant. Jean is grateful that she hasn't featured in any. Yet. Some of them are significantly more distressing. Terror tinged memories turned endless nightmares of beatings and earthquakes and fights ending in blood and tears. The nights that these happened Jean would lay awake the rest of the night trying to center herself again. 

The nights she has the premonition of the end of the world is the first time she wakes up shouting, terrified. This one came from no where, and she knew it. 

After Egypt, the massive upswing in her use of her powers leads to it occurring more and more. 

Her control over most other aspects of her powers has improved so much, it drives her mad that she still can't seem to do much about it.

One night it all seems to pile up. 

As soon as she wakes up from one dream about being crushed by falling debris, she's fallen into another about being attacked in a cage, ending with her waking up with her chest burning because she had been running from a mob that seemed to never slow down. 

Finally having had enough, she takes a spare blanket, and goes down stairs to the common room, as far away from the dorms as she can get. 

There's an ever present hum of people's voices in her head now, ones that she can choose whether to tune out or reach in. It's very faint out here alone, making her hope that she's far enough to get some sleep. 

She realizes, ruefully, that she hasn't had a dream that she knew was her own in ages. 

There's a movie quietly playing on TV as white noise as she settles on one of the sofas and shuts her eyes. 

As she starts to drift off, a sudden rush of noise in her head makes her jerk back awake. 

She lets out a breath of relief when she realizes it's just Scott coming from the direction of the kitchen holding a glass. He's in shorts and a shirt and looks as tired as she feels. 

"Sorry, I didn't realize...you couldn't sleep either?"

Jean nods, not really wanting to go into it. She doesn't say anyhing when he sits down on the other end of the sofa. She could sleep as easily with him here as without. Scott's thoughts aren't loud or intrusive, in fact she's recently come to think of them as rather comforting, familiar even. 

When he reaches back to rub his neck, she asks even though she knows the answer, "Bad dreams?"

"Yeah, every night it seems. You too?"

She heaves a sigh. "Every one else does, so that means I do too". 

He looks at her oddly, and she realizes she just said what she was trying to avoid saying. 

"You see other people's dreams? Is that part of your power?"

Jean wads up the blanket on her lap with her hands, and forces herself to sit up straighter. 

"The professor said that its more like dreams can be just different kinds of thoughts...and just like loud waking thoughts, people sometimes project their dreams to me."

"You're not in control? You see them whether you want to or not?"

"Just like your own dreams". 

"That's awful". 

She flushes. It is awful. It's hard to describe, how unnatural it feels. How much it feels like she's being forced to watch things she shouldn't, to be somewhere that she shouldn't. Somewhere private. It feels like a huge violation. 

"Has it always happened?"

Jean shakes her head. "A little, a couple of times a month maybe...but ever since Egypt it's been worse. Every night, multiple times a night". 

Scott laughs. "Yeah, between the giant battle and the mansion exploding, it was an intense few days. I'm not surprised everyone's having bad dreams. I've had a few about..."

He trails off. 

"I know. You had the dream about him two days ago". 

He starts to open his mouth, looking as though he wants to apologize, before Jean waves him off. 

"Don't. I know you didn't know. And it's not like anyone can control what their dreaming, much less know I'm there..."

"Some people can".

She's taken aback. "What?"

"One of my teachers mentioned it once, it's called lucid dreaming. People who know their dreaming when it happens, and can control their actions, do whatever they want..."

"Is this something people can learn?" Jean asks abruptly, insides swirling. This isn't something she's ever heard of, but the potential is amazing. 

"I..don't really remember much about what she said, but I think so, even though I don't know exactly how". 

She's suddenly wide awake, and has to force herself to nod back out when Scott gets up to go back to his room. 

Sleeping on the couch manages to give her some quiet sleep for the first time in weeks, and she wakes up energized. 

The next few days are spent in a flurry in the library seeking information about lucid dreaming. Unexpectedly, it's Professor McCoy who gives her the name of what ends up helping her, reality checks. He describes them as often also being employed by people with mental illnesses leading to problems with separating reality from delusion, but that lucid dreamers often used them too. 

She starts checking her face in every mirror she walks by. She stares at her palms at random intervals. She'll grab a book and randomly read a random sentence twice. 

These become second nature within a few days. 

She sleeps on the couch a few more days, until she's confident enough to return to the dorms. 

The first night, the mob dream returns. It starts the same, running, noise, and the smoke from their torches following her. A bare chance gets her to check her palms. 

Blue? No that's not right, and they were so blurry. 

Her mind still. She's running a forest, that looks like images she's seen of the European countryside. This dream must be Kurt's. He's told them all stories about how he grew up in Germany. 

She takes several deep breathes, and forces herself to think of lightness. 

And before she knows it, she's floating, above the ground, then above the trees, far from her pursuers. 

She wakes, for the first time in forever, with a laugh. 

The next time she sees Scott by himself, she's overwhelmed by a such a strong sense of fondness, that she throws her arms around him, thanking him profusely. 

"It actually worked, you could change the course of the dream?"

She nods enthusiastically. 

"I'm jealous actually, that sounds really cool". 

There's warmth in his voice, and his mind. It's in hers too. It's been there for a while, if she admits. She's wanted to say something, but something she senses makes her think it would be important to him to say it first.

She tries to teach him what she does, but he insists over weeks that it doesn't take. 

Her nights are much quieter now. It's as though having a way out makes the projected dreams easier to avoid, and easier to deal with when they happen. 

Scott's right, it is fun. Dreams have none of the constraints that the world does. Flying, genuinely soaring over places, not just levitating like her powers sometimes allow, is as great as she ever imagined.

He asks her out a few weeks later, and she agrees. 

Sometime after that, a stray dream that makes it's way from him to her, gives her another idea. 

Earlier that day, a group of them had gone down to a pond just off of Xavier's property for a swim. It had been a nice day, clear and sunny, and the afternoon had light hearted and fun. Something that didn't seem to happen in their lives very often. 

That night, as she sleeps, she finds herself back at the pond, splashing in the shallow water. Scott's there too, and something in his gaze makes her understand that this is his dream. 

It's just as warm as earlier, hazy and bright like happy dreams sometimes were. 

The whole dream is suffused with a sort of lazy warmth. Jean dimly realizes that no one's there but the two of them, even though she thinks she might not mind if they were. She could leave this, force herself away from it if she wanted, but she likes this one. She wants to see where it goes.

He'd kissed her, earlier, hanging back behind everyone before returning to the mansion. This time, she approaches him first. 

They're waist deep in the water, which is impossibly clear and cool. His eyes lock on her, and Jean realizes that he doesn't have to wear his glasses here. Even though it's never bothered her, getting to see his eyes when she kisses him and grips her hands along his collar bone is quite nice. 

He pulls back the power of his eyes on her is burning, searing. The swimsuit she's wearing is much skimpier than her real one- normally that might embarrass her, but she's so overcome with giddiness that she doesn't care. 

She kisses him again, and they sink back against the water, floating in a completely unrealistic way. 

The sun soaks into her skin as Scott kisses his way down her neck and chest. Her carefully skirts the line of the fabric of her swimsuit top, frustrating her. A quick splash is all it takes for her to untie and remove it. 

His hand sink lower down her belly as heat pools there, rising...

Jean awakes, breathless. Then she actually curses aloud. Of course it would end before the good parts. 

She still can barely meet Scott's eyes over breakfast. 

A few weeks after, when they're studying at a table in the lounge, she wonders. 

"If other people can project their dreams into me, could I do it to them too?"

Scott looks up from his biology book. 

"Can you do it with regular thoughts?"

"Sure, it's one of the things the professor's been working with me on, mostly with images."

"Then you could probably do it with dreams too."

"Would the other person know it was from me though?"

"You know when your dreams weren't yours". 

She thinks. "True. But it really wouldn't be fair if they couldn't be part of it too."

"Well you're aware in your dreams now right? You could probably say a code word trigger word to let them become aware too". 

Jean files the thought away in her head. 

A few days later, she slips him a piece of paper with the word "rhinoceros" on it. 

After that, she finally gets up the courage to give it a try. 

It might have been the movie that had been on the TV the night before, but Jean had always wanted to go to Hawaii, so the tropical beach that appeared in her mind shouldn't have been a surprise. 

It was night, warm with a huge full moon. The sand was cool under her feet, the thin cotton dress she wore more than enough. 

Scott was on the beach, looking out onto the water. 

She goes up to him, to take his hand, and whispers to him, "Rhinoceros". 

She can feel the moment he becomes attuned to the dream, the familiar touch of his conscious thoughts brushing hers. 

"This really us, this is really you?"

"It was your idea wasn't it?"

He looks around down the beach. 

"You were right, this is amazing". 

She laughs, and kisses him fiercely. "It really is". 

"So here, we can do..."

"Whatever we want" she says, taking both of his hands in hers. 

Jean's lucid dreams have been easier for her to remember that her old ordinary ones. 

And those following seemingly timeless minutes, with the sand against her back, the moon reflecting off their skin, and the press of Scott's body against hers, is something she hopes she never forgets.


End file.
